Backdrop
Throughout its relatively short cultural history, photographer’s studio backdrop has, alongside different props, served as a creative and imaginary place of wish fulfilment, aspirations or nostalgic longing. It has created and followed pictorial conventions, and at the same time broken with them. Lastly, in the digital age it has evolved into the ever and instantly changing backscreen in which the frivolous creativity seems to be unleashed in its fullness. Regardless of its form – either as a part of a fancy 19th century attic studio, characterless shopping mall cubicle, a makeshift setup in student admission office or as the portable backdrop of a street peddler portraitist – photographer’s backdrop is first and foremost a place of exchange of mastery of technique, desires, conventions and money. Guided by the wish it is a reproduction of prevailing social norms and conventions, or a temporary shelter from them. Even today there seems to be a certain charm in the sociability and ritualistic nature of old photographer’s studio backdrop practices. Not only that – backdrop always served as a background, a frame, an ideological grid – artistic and scientific – on which the object of interest, desire or investigation itself was superimposed, thus delineating, exposing, accentuating its features.
Content
4 Keeping a Story Alive • Interview with Lukas Birk • Lenart J. Kučić
14 Studio Portraiture as a Construct • Interview with Ana Peraica • Emina Djukić
18 Noémie Goudal • Urška Savič
20 Daesung Lee • Urška Savič
22 Olja Triaška Stefanovič • Urška Savič
24 Photography Is the Only Art Form That We All Do • Interview with Martin Parr • Jasna Jernejšek
30 Backdrops • Conversation with Chris Pinney • Paolo S. H. Favéro
38 The Studio Photograph as a Conceptual Framework • Caroline Molloy
48 More Than a Portrait • Framing the Photograph as Sculpture and Video Animation • Karin Becker and Geska Helena Brečević
56 A Nostalgic Longing for the 20th Century • Past and Present Backdrops and Scenes in the Skylight Studio of Josip Pelikan • Helena Vogelsang
62 Travel Images, Capitalism and the Ideology of Enjoyment • Janaki Somaiya
67 Background • Hrair Sarkissian
72 Photo Studio • Ketaki Sheth
78 New Conversations around Old Photographs • BIND
84 Love Studio • Samsul Alam Helal
Kolofon
MEMBRANA 5 / 2018 • ISSN 2463-8501 • publisher: Membrana, Maurerjeva 8, 1000 Ljubljana • tel.: +386 (0) 31 777 959 • email: info@membrana.org • editors: Jan Babnik (editor-in-chief), Ilija T. Tomanić • editorial board: Mark Curran (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland; Freie Universität Berlin, Germany), Ana Peraica (independent researcher, educator, Croatia), Witold Kanicki (UAP Poznań, Poland), Miha Colner (International Centre for Graphic Arts, MGLC, Ljubljana, Slovenia), Lenart Kučić (independent journalist, Pod črto, Slovenia), Emina Djukić (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), Jasna Jernejšek (independent researcher, curator, Slovenia), Asko Lehmuskallio (University of Tampere, Finland), Devon Schiller (independent researcher, USA), Robert Hariman (Northwestern University, USA) • advisory board: Alisha Sett, Andreia Alves de Oliveira, Iza Pevec, Matej Sitar • article contributors: Karin Becker, Geska Helena Brečević, Jasna Jernejšek, Martin Parr, Ana Peraica, Emina Djukić, Christopher Pinney, Paolo SH Favéro, Lukas Birk, Iza Pevec, Caroline Molloy, Janaki Somaiya, Helena Vogelsang, Urška Savič • translations: Tom Smith • proofreading: Tom Smith, Anja Kos • image & projects contributors: BIND Collective, Hrair Sarkissian, Martin Parr, Lukas Birk, Christopher Pinney, Naresh Bhatia, Ketaki Sheth, Caroline Molloy, Samsul Alam Helal, Janaki Somaiya, Daesung Lee, Noémie Goudal, Olja Triaška Stefanovič, Borut Peterlin, Dragan Arrigler, Josip Pelikan • design: Primož Pislak • printing: Cicero • print-run: 400 • all images and texts © Membrana, except when noted otherwise • editorial photograph: Samsul Alam, from the series Love Studio, 2010–2015 • last page photo from: part of a backdrop, Icon Studio, Numawongo Market II, Bukasa Parish, Kampala, Uganda (photographers Tim Prince in Eddy Tumwine), 2014. Photograph by: Jan Babnik.
This post is also available in: Slo